


penelope

by bee_kind



Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - All Media Types, The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 20:32:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5305853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bee_kind/pseuds/bee_kind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, five people who never doubted, not for one second, that Mark Watney would get home safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Musa Oneko

**Author's Note:**

> I saw this piece of art last night and whoo, buddy. It's outside of what I usually write about; it doesn't have any magic or superheroes. It's science is anything but fictional.
> 
> Still, it's a good story.

Musa Oneko, age seven, Harlem in New York City knew more about getting somewhere safely than most people. After all, stowing away on a cargo ship required a good deal of bravery and no small amount of finesse. He’d made it all the way to the US to get to his mother from Kenya and he’d had no help, just her instructions and the occasional crew member who was willing to look the other way, but Mark Watney was an astronaut and a botanist and what most people believed to be a genius, and so there was no doubt in Musa’s mind that he’d make it. Desert planet or not, he’d make it. He was sure of it. **  
**


	2. Alisha Watney

Alisha Watney, no relation, had been at a talk the astronauts of Ares 3 had offered her engineering class. She’d only been a sophomore, but she knew her plans: graduate, get her doctorate, go on the the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena and then change the world. Mr. Watney -once again, no relation- had made her believe that she could. All the astronauts had been inspiring -they were astronauts, it was practically their job- but Mr. Watney had had her ready to graduate in two years and apply for astronaut candidacy. She did end up graduating early, had just gotten accepted into grad school in New York when she heard the news. He’d told her once -well, really a crowd of about two hundred that she just happened to be sitting in- that the greatest human need wasn’t water or light or oxygen; it was home, and they’d do anything to get back to it. She hoped he’d do anything to get back to it, knew he would. She figured the least she could do was go to Times Square to watch them bring him home. They might not have been related, but that night, everyone on earth was watching their brother, their son, their father being brought back. **  
**


	3. Vincent Kapoor

Vincent - _Venkat_ \- Kapoor was the product of an inherently dichotomic spiritual upbringing and his parents disagreed on most aspects of faith, the one thing they had both managed to instill in him was the fact that God did exist and they did hear their children’s prayers. He’d fallen out of the habit of praying as of late, but he figured the discovery of the stranding of an astronaut on an inhospitable planet was as good a time as any to start again. He prayed for Mark Watney. He prayed for the crew of Ares 3. Hell, he prayed for Rich Purnell and his calculations too, if a whispered ‘Oh, God.’ during the Hermes’ gravity slingshot around Earth could be considered a prayer. If his parents were right, if God was there and cared about their children’s wellbeing, then Mark Watney would get home. Vincent believed it. _Venkat_ believed it. Still, he prayed. He went to church. He laid flowers at the altar of Ganesha. **  
**


	4. Zhu Tao

Zhu Tao placed her faith in what she could see and feel and quantify. She dealt in absolutes only. She was not given to bouts of emotionality or battles with her morality, but even she wasn’t so heartless as to ignore the plight of a man stranded millions of miles from home. Still, she was a mathematician and when the American’s supply ship blew up in the atmosphere, she began running numbers. They had a problem, and the CNSA could solve it. It was all cause-effect, really. If she made the director aware that they could use the booster they had ready to go resupply Watney, then he would survive until Ares 4 could reach him, and he would get off of Mars. Those were the facts. She trusted her engineers and Watney had showed himself particularly resourceful. If he recieved resources, he would survive until someone could reach him. That she was sure of.


	5. Eliza Mercer-Watney

Eliza Mercer-Watney didn’t know a damn thing about science, at least not the high-level stuff they had her Mark doing. She’d grown up in the great plains, on one of the last private farms her state had left. She’d learned to milk a cow before she’d learned to write and she couldn’t tell a rocket from a rover, but she knew her son. She knew the kind of man he was and never, not for one second did she think that her boy wouldn’t make it back. He was resourceful, he was intelligent, he was over a hundred million miles away and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to help him, so she did what she could. Eliza grabbed herself a blanket and a cup of coffee and sat on her porch, long after her husband had gone to bed and stared up at the stars and waited.

 


End file.
